We have considerable experience getting parted to work. Basically, thedistinction between primary and extended partitions is not needed, nor are
partition types. There are other subtle differences too. Very annoyingly,

Correct.

SOME versions of parted interpret megabytes and even kilobytes (but not

Older versions, right?

1.6.19-1.EL had "standard" binary kB and mB.

1.8.1-17.el5 (CentOS 5.2), presumably a newer version, went to the decimal-only kB and mB. There were a lot of other format changes in output, too. We are on top of them, but decimal-only kB and mB is really a bad idea, since it's inconsistent with all previous practice and also with sectors.

Larry Dickson

sectors) as decimal only. For these you have to use unit B (bytes) to regaincontrol. Experiment a little, to see what uses counting from 1 or counting
from 0, and what uses last-index or total-size, as these off-by-1 errors canbe killer.

If you find problems like this with recent versions then please let us know via the parted mailing lists: